1914-1918: FROM THE MARNE TO THE SIGN­ING OF THE AR­MISTICE

The First World War could have been just an­other Euro­pean war: Ger­man armies sweep into Paris, the French sur­ren­der, a peace treaty is worked out and the war is in­deed over by Christ­mas. Had this hap­pened, the world would have been spared the four years of blood­shed that en­sued, and for Canada, not a sin­gle sol­dier would have been needed in Eu­rope. In­stead, the Ger­mans were re­pulsed at the Bat­tle of the Marne, un­wit­tingly sign­ing the death war­rant for mil­lions.

FIRST TRENCHES

The open­ing weeks of the First World War had been fought in the open: Great armies smash­ing into each other in farm­ers’ fields just as they had done for cen­turies. But on Sept. 15, 1914, stale­mated Bri­tish and Ger­man armies be­gan dig­ging for cover at po­si­tions in North­ern France. The trenches would en­dure for four years, stretch from the North Sea to Al­sace on the Swiss bor­der and cover some 56,000 km.

AIR-TO-AIR COM­BAT

Air­planes had only been in­tended as re­con­nais­sance de­vices. In­cred­i­bly, in the first days of the First World War en­emy pi­lots (who of­ten knew each other from pre-war Euro­pean fly­ing meet-ups) would even wave as they passed. On Oct. 5, 1914, this era defini­tively ended when a French pi­lot shot down a Ger­man plane. And this wasn’t a case of blaz­ing away at a face­less en­emy: The French­man pulled out his ri­fle and shot the Ger­man pi­lot di­rectly.

SPAN­ISH FLU CASE

Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, the par­tic­u­larly vir­u­lent flu that swept through a Kansas hos­pi­tal in early 1917 would have been an epi­demi­o­log­i­cal foot­note. But oc­cur­ring as it did dur­ing the largest move­ment of hu­man­ity ever known, the Span­ish Flu would spread like prairie fire and kill more peo­ple than the war that spawned it. Tar­get­ing the young in par­tic­u­lar, there’s no telling how many fu­ture lead­ers or in­no­va­tors it claimed.

ZEP­PELIN RAID

With a few small bombs ex­plod­ing in sea­side Bri­tish towns on Jan 19, 1915, the era of strate­gic bomb­ing had be­gun. Ger­man zep­pelins weren’t bomb­ing troops or mil­i­tary tar­gets: This was ter­ror bomb­ing de­signed to scare Bri­tain out of the war. It didn’t work, but the idea of “break­ing the morale of a pop­u­la­tion” through bomb­ing would go on to kill mil­lions be­fore the cen­tury was out.

ZIM­MER­MANN TELE­GRAM

It is per­haps the most stag­ger­ing diplo­matic cockup in his­tory: Ger­man for­eign sec­re­tary Arthur Zim­mer­mann sent Mex­ico a mis­sive ask­ing them to de­clare war on the United States. On Jan. 16, 1917, Bri­tish code­break­ers de­ci­phered the en­crypted mes­sage. It drove a skep­ti­cal U.S. into the war in April 1917.

LENIN IN RUS­SIA

Amid news of spon­ta­neous rev­o­lu­tion in Rus­sia, Ger­many ar­ranged for Vladimir Lenin to be sent home to his coun­try in a sealed train. Their idea, which turned out to be pre­scient, was that Lenin would hi­jack the rev­o­lu­tion and end Rus­sia’s war with Ger­many, which hap­pened late in 1917. But the move un­leashed a tide of com­mu­nist sen­ti­ment that would ul­ti­mately come for Ger­many it­self.

SPRING OF­FEN­SIVE

At mul­ti­ple points it was a tossup who would win. The Spring Of­fen­sive in March 1918 was Ger­many’s at­tempt to score a knock­out blow be­fore the Amer­i­cans be­came an ef­fec­tive fight­ing force. But ini­tial Ger­man suc­cess soon be­came bogged down. They ended up with 800,000 killed or wounded.

USE OF POI­SON GAS

Cana­dian and French troops were the ones who suf­fered with the first large-scale use of poi­son gas — chlo­rine — on April 22, 1915, at the Bat­tle of Sec­ond Ypres. Within min­utes 5,000 sol­diers were dead. This was the point at which any sem­blance of war as a glo­ri­ous man-to-man strug­gle ended. Men were now erad­i­cated with hu­man in­sec­ti­cide.

BAT­TLE OF VER­DUN

This was where the First World War be­gan to trans­form from an unusu­ally costly con­flict into a fullfledged night­mare. Tens of thou­sands of men thrown into bat­tle for lit­tle or no re­sult. Troops forced to live among the piled corpses of their dead, drink from green puddles and go mad from con­stant shelling. All th­ese images be­came so­lid­i­fied at the Bat­tle of Ver­dun be­tween Fe­bru­ary and De­cem­ber 1916.

CHRIST­MAS TRUCE

The last gasp of ci­vil­ity on the West­ern Front. Sparked by the spirit of Christ­mas Day, Ger­man and Bri­tish troops met in No Man’s Land, sang car­ols, shared al­co­hol and food, and even played a soc­cer game. When se­nior of­fi­cers later heard what hap­pened they were hor­ri­fied. And by 1915 the ha­treds would be too deep, and the losses too great, for any shared hu­man­ity with the Ger­mans.

BAT­TLE OF THE SOMME

July 1, 1916, one of the most in­fa­mous days of the war. The open­ing of the Bat­tle of the Somme saw 100,000 Al­lied men — in­clud­ing New­found­lan­ders — sent “over the top” to take Ger­man trenches. The Ger­mans sim­ply mowed them down with ma­chine-gun fire. A to­tal of 19,240 were killed — it was the blood­i­est day in the his­tory of the Bri­tish army. The next five months would see a mil­lion sol­diers die from all sides.

CAP­TURE OF JERUSALEM

It was only a sideshow to the greater war, but the Bri­tish cap­tured Jerusalem and the fu­ture ter­ri­tory of Is­rael from the Ot­toman Empire in De­cem­ber 1917. Bri­tish Ma­jor T.E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Ara­bia — said: “For me (it) was the supreme mo­ment of the war.” The city’s cap­ture, along with the Sykes-Pi­cot Agree­ment, would largely set the stage for the Mid­dle East we know to­day.

GER­MANY FALLS APART

By late 1918, the Ger­man na­tion was sub­jected to waves of mu­tinies, protests and mini-revo­lu­tions. Its army was de­feated, its navy re­fused to fight, its peo­ple were starv­ing and the Kaiser had ab­di­cated. Aware that fu­ture fight­ing was hope­less, Ger­many agreed to an ar­mistice that came into ef­fect on Nov. 11, 1918.

Comments

123Canadafirst - 2018-11-10

I have a slightly different slant. Serbia was never content with the influence of Austria/ Hungary ( Hapsburg empire) and even before Austria declared war on Serbia following the killing of their archduke Ferdinand , Germany had guaranteed Austria it’s support. Germany knew that if it attacked France, Russia would be drawn in, as they were an ally of France. Meanwhile, Britain had guaranteed the security of Belgium, and when Germany moved into Belgium, it then drew Britain reluctantly into the war. Russia mobilized shortly after and Germany found itself fighting on two fronts, with Austria and Hungary as allies. Germany had been preparing for this for many years and had been confident in it’s formidable army. Later, Turkey and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and Italy joined the allies.